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Query Reformulation Behavior in an Interactive Query Expansion Environment

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Abstract

The article presents results of a study on search behavior in an interactive query expansion environment. In controlled experiments, users’ search behavior in retrieval system versions with varying levels of query expansion support is compared. On the one hand, the analysis of query logfiles reveals that interactive expansion term suggestions encourage users to utilize a wider variety of term tactics for reformulating their queries than users of a baseline group who are not offered any query expansion support. On the other hand, the experimental results indicate that the interactive expansion functionalities foster the application of facet expansion tactics in favor of the replacement tactic which prevails in system versions that do not offer interactive query expansion support. In summary, the study gives evidence that the implementation of interactive expansion term suggestions adds both to the complexity of the users’ queries and to the variety of their query vocabulary.

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Notes

  1. http://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/fis_bildung/index_e.html.

  2. The DAFFODIL project is continued and reimplemented in the context of the ezDL project (Easy Access to Digital Libraries, http://ezdl.de/).

  3. http://www.fachportal-paedagogik.de/fis_bildung/index_e.html.

  4. As of March 2011, see http://www.dipf.de/de/bildungsinformation/pdf/diagramme-zur-fis-bildung-literaturdatenbank/view.

  5. As of March 2011, approximately 80% of the documents are in German.

  6. http://lucene.apache.org/.

  7. As of March 2011, nearly 40% of the documents in the live implementation of the German Education Index include an abstract and the proportion has continually increased in recent years (see http://www.dipf.de/de/bildungsinformation/pdf/diagramme-zur-fis-bildung-literaturdatenbank/view).

  8. The original prototype was in German.

  9. For a comprehensive description of how the decision regarding which ontological relations to use for identifying expansion terms for the automatic and interactive modes was made, see Carstens [6].

  10. In the example query in Fig. 2, the expansion is partly obsolete because the automatic expansion with Sprachförderungsprogramm (“language support program”) will not deliver any additional documents as compared to the query for Sprachförderung (“language support”).

  11. http://wiki.bildungsserver.de/infoboerse/index.php/Bildungssystem_Deutschland.

  12. KMK is the abbreviation for Kultusministerkonferenz: The Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder in the Federal Republic of Germany (abbreviation: Standing Conference).

  13. PISA is the abbreviation for Programme for International Student Assessment.

  14. In case a parser mistake occurred more than once in a subject’s search session, this search session was excluded from the analyses to guarantee comparability. The majority of such mistakes was attributable to the fact that the query parser could not interpret queries with leading spaces. In case a parser mistake occurred exactly once, this was not expected to have an impact on the comparability of the search sessions.

  15. The automatic expansion of queries described in Sect. 3.1 is not taken into account in the analyses as the study primarily investigates whether the interactive expansion support has an impact on the users’ query (re-)formulation behavior.

  16. This study does not measure retrieval effectiveness but instead focuses on users’ reformulation behavior. For an analysis of the users’ search effectiveness in the three system versions, e.g. in terms of recall and precision, please refer to Carstens [6].

  17. Project website: http://www.foermig.uni-hamburg.de/web/de/all/org/index.html.

  18. Note that facets may nonetheless have been added to the queries more frequently. However, they are only represented in the graphs in Table 5 if the terms were semantically related to the original query.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Institute for International Educational Research, Information Center for Education, Schloßstraße 29, 60486, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Carola Carstens

  2. German Institute for International Educational Research, Center for Research on Educational Quality and Evaluation, Schloßstraße 29, 60486, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

    Dorothea Mildner

Authors
  1. Carola Carstens
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  2. Dorothea Mildner
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Correspondence to Carola Carstens.

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Carstens, C., Mildner, D. Query Reformulation Behavior in an Interactive Query Expansion Environment. Datenbank Spektrum 11, 161–172 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13222-011-0069-z

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